It's Steve (now in blog form)

Ebay is more than just the central hub of the illegal ivory trade, it also has some really incredible things now and again.  I just got something really cool.  The last time I was in Vegas I came across an odd shop in the Venetian.  It sells antiquities; ancient coins, helmets, jewelry, etc.  They also introduced me to the Roman archer’s ring.

Let me bore you for a minute with the details.  Western archers shoot off of their index, middle, and ring fingers.  Eastern archers shoot off the thumb.  Turns out that ancient Roman archers utilized the thumb technique as well.  They protected their thumbs with a specialized archer’s ring that lined in the inner length of the thumb with bronze.  

I didn’t even know that these existed until I saw the one in Vegas for $600.  Vegas shops are always a rip off so I headed to ebay.  Turns out that they are pretty readily available given the fact that they were so common.  After a few failed auctions I finally just won one for $60 with shipping.  It’s from the 1st to 4th century AD found in the Balkans (going to try and get more details to place which provence of the eastern Roman empire  that would be).

Here are some pics.  So cool.

I was in Vegas for Consumer Electronics Show this week.  Obviously this is very exciting considering my overarching gadget fetish.  It was fun except for the day I spent with food poisoning (special thanks to the IGN crew for what I assume was discount fish in the cocktail party appetizers).  There were a few of highlights to the trip.

The porno convention was in town!- It’s an odd thing to be walking through the casino and have a porn star go walking by in an outfit that can only be described as a creative use of dental floss and postage stamps.  There were a lot of them running around.  It got to the point where I was basically afraid to touch anything (its almost worse to touch it if you do know where it’s been).

Can I pay with PayPal?- I’m not sure if this means that their brand is incredibly strong or if it’s tanking.  

Even to dorky for me- Star Trek fans are an odd breed.  Lacking even the respect of other sci-fi dorks, they wander aimlessly from convention to convention desperately hoping Shatner can fill some sort of hole in their life.  Now in between conventions, they can gamble away the hard earned dollars they would normally spend of models and phasers.  I give you, Star Trek slots.  Well done, gambling industry.

Journalists need a sense of irony, not depth perception- I really really like this poster.  Norm!